Princess Nagger Awarded; Rock Balancing in Boulder; DIY Fun with Coffee Chat and RTT Rebel

We’re coming to the end of the school year! The kids are a little less draggy in the morning getting them up and ready for school, because not only do they have spring fever, but there’s more fun happening vs. just the boring old dry learning daily.

You know what I’m talking about.

Last week Princess Nagger was awarded a Certificate of Recognition in Excellence – when she gave me the invitation to attend the awards ceremony, this conversation took place:

Me: “Oh, cool! I better bring my big camera for that!”

PN: “Um, no, please don’t.”

Me: “Why not? Don’t you want me to take good pictures?”

PN: “You’ll probably be the only one, and you’ll just be a dork.”

Me: “Dorks are cool – you should know!”

PN: “……”

Yeah, I should have embraced my dorkiness and brought the big camera. My phone isn’t so forgiving on the focus when there’s constant movement about:

And even when the proud parents were allowed to come a little closer to snap pictures, motion is not my phone camera’s friend:

Lately Princess Nagger likes to make funky faces whenever her picture is getting taken:

At least she didn’t have the urge to do that with her school pictures. I still love that kid, dork or not.

Speaking of dorks or not… Did you hear about Boulder cops declaring ‘rock stacking’ a jailable offense to stop local artist who spent 7 years creating sculptures? Seriously! This artist dude likes to balance rocks in the river (and man is he good!):

Apparently, one police officer decided that balancing rocks in Boulder, Colorado is now illegal, obscurely referencing two city codes [5-4-8 and 5-4-2] about ‘destruction of public property’ in relation to rocks.

Crazy, no?

Michael Grab, aka Gravity Glue, posted on Facebook the outrage doing sort of a call to action – and it worked! The city attorney personally called to let him know that rock stacking was not illegal in Boulder. He is free to continue his creative rock balancing to his heart’s content without fear of being thrown in the slammer.

Gotta love the power of social media.

And just because this is funny… I was managing my Discover card account the other day and got sidetracked (a normal occurrence around here), so when I went back to the tab amongst the sea of tabs I had opened, this was waiting for me:

That totally cracked me up – I love it when a company has humor to those of us who are easily entertained.

It’s time once again for Leslie’s (aka Rory Bore) Tuesday Chat!

This week’s prompt or question is:

Somthing about DIY projects – I couldn’t find the verbiage of the prompt and had to nag Leslie on Twitter to find out, so just wing it…show off your DIY mad skillz since she’ll be sharing her headboard project (that she says she needs help with) as well as showing off the incredible sounding master bedroom makeover that she recently did (which makes her want to spend all day in bed…*snicker*!) 

I happen to have a creative side. I blame (and thank) my mother for that, she has some mad skillz herself. I also attribute my dad’s insistence that us kids help in any and all DIY projects around the house growing up to nurture that ‘mechanically inclined’ side. And to be able to jury rig anything MacGyver style.

I like creating things. I like looking at something and thinking to myself “I can do that…” and then do it. One of my favorite accomplishments, however, is when we decided to tackle the remodel project we felt was necessary in our old farmhouse in Pennsylvania when Princess Nagger was in potty-training mode and my late father-in-law was elderly. We needed some sort of bathroom on the first floor to eliminate the need for racing up a stairway to eliminate… particularly when in a hurry.

But we wanted to make sure we kept to the old charm our 1817 farmhouse possessed:

We had a brilliant idea to add a powder room to the first floor, but the quotes we got from local contractors were astronomical. We decided to do it ourselves.

There was a closet just inside the back door that housed the washer and dryer, but it was too small to add a toilet and sink so we decided to take a sledgehammer to it and start from scratch. The one end of the long living room went from this:

To this:

The ‘crafty’ part started with the bar – a carpenter friend took some 200 year old barn timbers and with hubby’s help, planed them down to a nice flat surface, then glued the 3 sections together into a nice bar top:

He and hubby built the sturdy frame for the bar top (even bolting one side down through the floor to one of the house beams in the basement for extra security), then bolted the top to the frame, finishing it off with more of the 200 year old beams and the wainscoting we found in the Summer House:

The corner shelving was created in stages – we started with an old corner cupboard frame we found in the Summer House, decided to use that as the ‘source’ of the shelving – mounted that to the wall first, then added wainscoting to finish out the back.

I cut triangular glass sections from an old storm window stored in the barn, and hubby added a great light fixture at the top. We also had some vintage mirror trays that were given to us by friends that I mounted on the back of each shelf to give it more depth:

The sink for the corner shelves was created by using a great bowl that my sister Kimn helped pick out. We cut a hole in the bottom of the bowl for a drain (we did buy 2 just in case we broke one with this experiment – amazingly we had no breakage!)

We found a great faucet at Lowe’s that fit perfect in the corner, giving us hot and cold running water:

The wine glass rack was yet another collective creative brainstorm – we found an old wooden ladder in the barn that we cut into 2 sections for the main frame, bolted to the studs in the powder room wall, and used the chain from my pot rack to mount the suspended end from a beam in the ceiling.

We also found an old wooden loom in the Summer House that worked perfect for the glass ‘slides’ so we cut it into sections and mounted them to the ladder in a custom size for the glasses displayed:

We found some great hanging light fixtures to bring more light to the bar top, and I mounted the speakers to my stereo on the top ladder section. I ran the wires into the wall before hanging the sheet rock and doing all the spackling and painting of the space.

I do miss the unique character of our old farmhouse, but am looking forward to move ahead with some DIY projects looming in the coming weeks here in our new house in the great Pacific Northwest.

The shed we got for storage is going to be converted into my crafty and winemaking space. I know, right?

We’d planned to shift the boxes from inside the shed into my side of the garage yesterday, but Mother Nature decided to rain on our parade. So it’ll definitely get switched around this weekend when the weather is supposed to be outstanding again.

Then the real work will begin in its interior transformation – the hubby is brainstorming on how we can run electricity to it, I’m scoping out economical ways to build some wine racks, and I already have a piece of art to hang in the corner where I’ll put a little bistro table for friends who want to come hang out and do some wine tasting as I’m creating. Any volunteers?

I also have a stained glass window (of a deer, of course) that the movers packed incorrectly and damaged it, so I’ll be repairing it myself and we’ll be installing it in the side of the shed for extra daylight.

We’ll also be putting in a window and installing a small air conditioning unit to make sure we keep the inside climate controlled – which of course means we’ll definitely be insulating and dry-walling the interior at some point as well.

I’ll definitely keep you posted as we progress, it’s going to be a fun space – we have some other creative ideas to incorporate as well, like an outdoor seating area and fold-down bar on the blank wall to the right. I know, we’re full of it. Ideas, that is.

That’s a wrap for this week – you know the drill, link up and join in the fun, everyone is welcome, random or not. And that means even if you don’t have a specific Random Tuesday Thoughts Rebel post posted, you can still link up, I’m not picky. You don’t even have to add the badge, just link up so I can come harass you on your blog. I promise to play nice.

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Link up your Random (or not) here:

Keeping the random alive (barely) – feel free to snag a badge and play along – one for my wino friends:

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And one for my non-wino friends:

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